Cut the rope to feed candy to little monster Om Nom®! 250 million downloads around the world of this phenomenal puzzle game. 350 levels and more to come!...

Angry Birds is a tough act to follow, and some direct clones like Cannon Cadets have failed to capture its charm and playability. We may have finally found a worthy successor to Angry Birds: The adorable physics-based puzzle game Cut The Rope.

As the game starts, a mysterious package lands at your doorstep. Inside is a creature called Omnom (perhaps he escaped from Nom?). Omnom has an appetite for candy, but you can only feed it to him via an elaborate series of strings, bubbles, and other objects.

In each level, you’re given a piece of candy attached to at least one piece of string. By swiping, you can cut the string and drop candy into Omnom’s waiting mouth. Sometimes you’ll have to time your cut so that the candy swings at just the right angle. Bubbles, which make your candy float, and spikes, which break your candy, complicate things significantly.

Like in Angry Birds, you’ll be ranked 1-3 stars for each level, but here you can get a higher rank by picking up stars within the level. We saw lots of levels, and more should be coming later in an update. Cut The Rope will also include Chillingo’s Crystal leaderboards and achievements.

From what we played of it, we think Cut the Rope is a lot of fun and could become rather popular when it hits the App Store in the next few weeks. It’s challenging, but a successful run through a level only takes a few seconds, making it extremely easy to get into. This is definitely one to watch out for.

The original Cut the Rope has been updated with yet another pack of 25 levels, this time called the Tool Box. The new gameplay mechanic introduced in this level consists of saw blades that rotate at the push of a button. To beat most of the levels, you have to navigate the candy carefully between saw blades, while rotating them with split-second timing.

The levels also incorporate elements from previous boxes, like gravity switching, connecting two candy halves, teleportation top hats, etc. And as always, to get all the stars in some of the levels, you have to think outside the box, so to speak (har har).

Anyway, the Tool Box is fun, it’s Cut the Rope-y, and if you have the game you should download this update right away. If you don’t have Cut the Rope, there’s never been a better time to buy it than now.

Cut the Rope is like the gift that keeps on giving. Chillingo has just announced a forthcoming update (version 1.4, if you’re counting) that includes the “Toy Box” level pack: a group of 25 new levels that feature springboards that bounce the candy toward Om Nom’s ever-eager open mouth. Check out the trailer below.

Aside from the new level pack, the update will also include a Star Key, which unlocks all level packs, including future ones (presumably this will be available as an in-app purchase). You’ll also be able to choose which kind of candy you’re feeding to Om Nom, as well as find hidden drawings in each level pack. Look for this free update soon.

Have we mentioned lately how much we love Cut The Rope? The feeling must be mutual, because developer ZeptoLab is adding more levels for Valentine’s Day in the upcoming 1.2 update. We’ve got the first trailer below.

One other bit of news from Chillingo: Cut The Rope has been purchased six million times worldwide. That’s an awful lot of candy.

Chillingo just dropped a line to let us know that update 1.1 is coming soon for the smash hit (and extremely fun) Cut The Rope. As a by-the-way, they also mentioned that the game has sold over three million copies worldwide. That’s a lot of cavities for Om Nom.

This free update will include a new level pack called the Cosmic Box, which will contain an additional 25 levels. The Cosmic Box will have a space ship theme, as well as a new gameplay mechanic that “turns physics upside down.” Also included will be “enhanced Retina display graphics, improved scoring accuracy, more expressive Om Nom animations, new musical sounds, and 11 new achievements.”

And if that’s not enough for you, they’re also promising to release another update in time for the holidays. While you wait, take a gander at the teaser trailer they just released for the new update.

Cut The Rope from ZeptoLab lays down a few simple rules: OmNom wants candy, dangling nearby from a rope. Just cut the tether and send it flying into his mouth. But once you throw in bubbles, barriers, and bellows, things get complicated. We spoke to ZeptoLab CTO Efim Voinov about what made Cut The Rope a top-selling success.

Cut The Rope is the first game in months to take the #1 US App Store spot from Angry Birds and hold it. Was there a lot of celebration when you heard the news?

Efim: From the very early stage of Cut the Rope’s development, we knew we’ve got something worthy, but we haven’t really expected the success of such scale! We were celebrating when the game got to the top 100, we were celebrating when it hit the top 10. When it got to #1, we were already working on the game’s updates.

How did your team come up with the idea for Cut the Rope?

Efim: Zeptolab’s first game Parachute Ninja was initially named Yo-Yo Ninja, and had the main character swinging on the rope.

The control scheme was quite sophisticated, and somewhere in the middle of the game’s development the rope was replaced with the parachute. Parachute Ninja still has many clues of its origins, the main character’s shape being one of them.

It was quite a pity to drop the rope engine the team have worked on for quite a long time, so we started to think about the ways it can be utilized in future projects. After trying several gameplay prototypes, we’ve picked the one that had most the fun, and, to be honest, the gameplay hasn’t really changed much since then.

How do you meet your goals of creating a simple, addictive iPhone game?

First of all, we learn from the best games available on the App Store, trying to analyze the reasons of their success. Also, during the game’s development we ask many of our friends (especially the non-gamer types) to try our game and provide the feedback to us– and it has proved to be an extremely useful practice.

What will the updates for Cut the Rope look like?

We will be adding the new levels on a regular basis, as well as other cool stuff like new OmNom’s animations and sounds.

We are also aware of some bugs that game currently has, and fixing those is the highest priority for us now. Many players have been also asking for the Retina screen support and we will definitely do our best to have it implemented really soon.

Can we expect to see more of OmNom, or maybe some of his friends?

Quite likely, as it seems that this little guy is one of the big reasons of the game’s success! We are not quite sure if those will be sequels or if they will be just the branched-out games that share the theme and the characters, but we will definitely try to expand the world where OmNom lives (which is so far, ironically, just the box).

Did any obstacles not make the cut in Cut the Rope?

We had quite a big pool of ideas for the game’s obstacles and functional elements, and so far just a small portion of those have been implemented in the game. Some just didn’t work well enough, and many more are waiting to be released with the updates.

What is your team working on next?

We will probably spend at least a few coming months working on the updates for Cut the Rope. We have received a tremendous amount of feedback from the players, so now we have everything we need to make the game near-to-perfect. However, we have already got some cool ideas for the future projects and we can’t wait to put our hands on those as well!

With “Cut the Rope” we have raised the level of expectations from our company and we’ll be sure to keep pushing it further up.

Cut the Rope is a downright adorable action-puzzle-physics game. It’s also fresh, challenging, gorgeous, and highly entertaining. It has simple rules, intuitive controls, and can be played in short bursts or blitzed through in a marathon gaming session. In short, it’s exactly the type of game most people who own iPhones want to play. And play it they should!

The goal of each level is to feed a piece of candy, suspended by a series of ropes, into the mouth of a cuddly little monster named Om Nom, who is located somewhere on the screen. To do that, you have to cut the ropes in a way that makes the candy swing, jump, or fall into the little guy’s mouth. If you can do that while picking up all of the stars in each level, then you’re golden.

But this is a puzzle game, so you’ll have to put on your thinking cap to figure out which ropes to cut, and in what order. Complicating matters, you’ll encounter movable pegs, spikes and electricity, bubbles that make the candy float, and whoopie cushions that, when tapped, send puffs of air that can blow the candy where you need it to go.

Be careful where you sit.

Each level is cleverly designed to make delivering the candy to the monster difficult but not impossible. Solving the levels requires precise timing or delicate precision, or– better yet– both. As you progress through the game’s 100 levels (more are on the way, says the developer), the difficulty mounts steadily, resulting in some real head-scratchers toward the end. Both Crystal and Game Center provide leaderboards and achievements, giving the game a healthy amount of replay value.

The only issues we have with Cut the Rope are some minor control annoyances. For instance, once sliding pegs are introduced, the game will occasionally think you’re trying to move a peg when you mean to cut a rope or vice versa. This can get you into trouble in some levels, but it’s mostly a minor annoyance.

Cut the Rope is a game nearly everyone will enjoy, puzzle enthusiast or not. It packs all the charm, variety, and smart level design you could hope for, while maintaining simplicity of gameplay. In fact, we’d put it right up there with the best casual games on the App Store, like Fragger, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds. Be sure to pick this one up.

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